10 Poetry Prompts about Love & Hate in February

Graphic by Gordon Johnson

First Mentor Poem

Boy Saint
PETER LeBERGE                                                                                                               
        
​         for Eric
In the beginning, we were one blood.
Then the body, stem of thorns, grew
its disagreement from the inside
out. Like all biblical stories, it begins
with a simple thorn, a natural secret
the body kept from itself. I open
the sealed envelope: everything in the sky
folded, gathered into one body. Shoulders,
the tightness of my mouth. Wounded
bird. Lightning fluttering between two boys
who want to be in a basement in a town
they dreamt up. Lightning in cities and towns
I’ve never been to, never heard of. I am
positive. I am not. I make a moon with sugar
and a damp thumb, watch its unlicked body
dissolve into memory. A couple of towns over
I am born and reborn. I am not. Not positive
until I say it. Until I taste it. Boys died and die
in bodies like this and don’t ghost, except
on voice messages their mothers play to keep
alive. They dress to grieve in churches. Inside
black moons. Blotted-out days. Separate from face,
posthumous thorn. Body liquefaction. I dream
about altar boys in ironed seersucker suits
pecking each other like swallows when dared. Boys
with whiskey-mark necks. Like a scream of darts
found them in the sanctuary’s locked basement
in the dark. One night, they drew it—the town
they dreamt of, fences yellowed, clouds like the static
on the tv. Their only light. Knowing any other light
would wake one’s sleeping sister, her body
in the corner of the room’s mouth. Faithful,
moving only as God does. One night
in a symphony of nights. And He likes us
until he doesn’t. Like trees struck by lightning,
we aren’t visible until we’re on fire. Everything
depreciates like this once it’s been said. Unless
it is overheard. Unless it is shot in flight.

Poetry Prompts

• Tell me about a natural secret the body kept from itself
• Write a poem about the parts of the body you notice on someone
• Tell me about Getting high
• Write about unrequited love
• Write a list of metaphors for a secret you hold
• Boys died and die / in bodies like this and don’t ghost, except / on voice messages their mothers play to keep /alive.  What’s haunting you? How does it haunt you?
• Write about a homoflexible/heteroflexible attraction

Second Mentor Poem

Hate Poem
JULIE SHEEHAN

Poetry Prompts

• 10 things I hate about you—write the poem
• Make a list poem about the dualities of an emotion you have
• Body parts, make a list of metaphors for your body parts (my lungs, duplicitous twins)

For Discussion

If You Forget Me
PABLO NERUDA
 
I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.